![]() Compared with the older vessels of the Scandinavian Iron Age, the Viking ships show several improvements in construction: the flat bottom plank is replaced by a true keel which serves as a backbone and is strong enough to resist the pressure of the water outside. The main components of the Gokstad ship are keel, stem, stern-post, ribs, and planking. A fascimile of the ship of nearly 32 tons/32,513kgs, made in 1893, successfully crossed the Atlantic. The ship, which was composed entirely of oak, is well preserved it is about 76 feet/23.1m long, 17 1/2 feet/5.3m wide, and nearly 6 1/2 feet/1.9m deep from the gunwale to the bottom of the keel, and with equipment weighs a little over twenty tons/20,321kgs net. ![]() The burial dates from around the year 900. Outside the chamber were found the bones of a peacock, and near the ship the remains of eighteen slaughtered animals- twelve horses and six dogs. In the burial-chamber there were fragments of woolen cloth and of silk enriched with gold threadwork, the remains of a leather purse, an axe, an iron belt-buckle, and strap-mounts of lead and gilded bronze. He was well equipped for his journey: there were three rowing-boats and five beds in the prow of the ship amidships there was a abundance of kitchen utensils, such as bronze and iron cauldrons, plates, cups, candlesticks, barrels, and wooden spades and a wooden gaming board and a carved sledge were also included. An examination of the skeleton showed him to have been a powerfully-equipped built man of middle-age, almost six feet/1.8m tall. Within there had been buried a chieftain lying, elegently dressed and armed, in his bed. this chamber, too, had been pillaged long ago, as a large hole in the ship’s side and in the wall of the chamber showed. The mast had been cut off level with the roof of the timbered burial-chamber which was built athwart the stern of the vessel. It was deeply buried in blue clay, which had preserved it, with its bow towards the sea. The Gokstad ship, in a mound 162 feet/49.3m wide and 16 feet/4.8m, was excavated in 1880. It is dated approximately to the end of the ninth century. Shetelig describes this Tune ship as a good workmanlike vessel, devoid of decoration sitting low in the water, and very suitable for navigating shallow water such as estuaries. It had been placed in the mound with its mast erect, but its eleven pairs of oars had been removed before the burial ceremony. It was made from oak, with a rudder of pine. ![]() The ship itself, poorly preserved in the ground, was about 65 feet/19.8m long, 14 feet/4.2m in the beam, and about 4 1/2 feet/1.37m from its gunwale to the underside of the keel. Little else had survived: a wooden spade, some carved bits of wood, fragments of clothing and weapons, and a few beads. The chamber had been robbed and ransacked in ancient times, but within it the excavators found the remains of a man and a horse, the latter apparently buried in a standing position. ![]() Athwart the stern was a platform of poles, their ends penetrating into the clay beyond the ship’s bulwarks, and on this platform had been built a burial-chamber of oak, covered by a flat roof. The ship was lying north-to-south, embedded in blue clay which had preserved its timbers through the centuries. The Tune ship was excavated in 1867, in a large grave-mound about 260 ft/79.2m in diameter. All three can be seen today in the Viking Ship Museum at Bygdo outside Oslo. The three ships were found in the Oslo Fjord: at tune on the eastern side, and at Gokstad and Oseberg on the western side. Here, by the sea’s edge, three great mounds were built in viking times, each of which bequeathed a Viking ship to posterity. An Icelandic poet from the Viking period, Egil Skallagrimsson, called the breakers that beat against the rugged, rocky Norwegian coast the island-studded belt round Norway’. It is appropriate that Norway in particular should have preserved for us several specimens of its vessels from the Viking Age, as, because of their extensive coastline, the Norwegians know the sea as do few other nations. Whether the black ship was on its ‘cool keel’, gliding peacefully away from land, or, like ‘the goat of the sea’, butting the waves with its stem, it was always the Vikings’ favourite creation, made by his skilful hand and affectionately remembered in his poetry. What the temple was to the Greeks, the ship was to the Vikings: the complete and harmonious expression of a rare ability. The ships of the Vikings were the supreme achievement of their technical skill, the pinnacle of their material culture they were the foundation of their power, their delight, and their most treasured possession.
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